Posted on 08/12/2003 9:55:31 PM PDT by carlo3b
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SLIMMERS following the controversial Atkins diet are gambling with their health, a nutrition expert has warned. Dr Susan Jebb said it would be "negligent" to recommend the diet, favoured by stars such as Geri Halliwell and Catherine Zeta-Jones, to anyone overweight. Millions of people around the world have tried the low-carbohydrate, high-protein regime. But Dr Jebb, of the Medical Research Council's Human Nutrition Research Centre in Cambridge, said its claimed benefits were based on "pseudo-science". She argued that, despite a number of studies, no one knew what the long- term effects might be. Dr Robert Atkins, who developed the diet, believed that carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, rice and starchy vegetables made the body produce too much insulin. He claimed that led to hunger and weight gain. His answer was to avoid such foods and eat unlimited amounts of fat and protein, leading the body to burn fat. But Dr Jebb said such a dramatic change in eating habits was a leap in the dark. For most people, protein accounts for a mere 15 per cent of their calorie intake. But much higher levels are eaten on the Atkins diet. Dr Jebb said: "We simply do not know the long-term health implications. "I certainly think we should be adopting a precautionary principle in terms of public health." Her warning comes two months after two teams of American scientists declared the Atkins diet was effective and safe. They found that over six months, 63 Atkins slimmers lost almost twice as much weight, an average of one and a half stone. After a year, the gap had closed though, with the Atkins dieters down to an average weight loss of a stone compared with half a stone for others. But Dr Jebb said the studies were too limited to provide meaningful evidence. Dr Atkins died in April, aged 72, after slipping on ice outside his New York office and hitting his head. |
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I don't think that's her book. I think she's the co-author of a book review.I bet she is out trying to sell a new diet plan book and make herself money.
Give that man a cigar!!
I haven't been able to find any books by Susan Jebb. I suspect she's just someone who's stuck in the conventional wisdom that she was taught in med school.
It's amazing how overwhelmingly sweet the sugary foods taste after you go on the low-carb diet. Hubby & I eat sugar-free yogurt (Fred Meyer/QFC/Kroger), and once we bought a standard yogurt by mistake. As soon as we opened the container we could smell the sugar molecules wafting up. Yech!
It's easier to actually read the book before you start throwing opinions around. During induction you are allowed 20g of carbs per day. What is suggested is 2 cups of salad greens (real lettuce, not just iceberg) and an additional cup of another low carb veggie per day in addition to the protein foods.
I've never in my life, until Atkins, eaten 3 cups of vegetables daily. Now, after induction one is to add back 5g of carbs per week until weight loss slows down (2 lbs per week). The first carbs added back are recommended to be another serving of vegetables. Next, Atkins recommends adding some fruit, but good fruit, the most nutritionally dense fruit compared to the amount of carbs (which happens to be berries).
The bottom line for Atkins is finding what amount of carbs you can handle and maintain a healthy weight. Depending upon your body chemistry and level of exercise, the amount of carbs will vary. Ideally, even if one can handle 200+g of carb per day, one is choosing their carbs from the most nutritionally dense available. As an example, white potatos are very high in carbs without being very nutritionally dense. Sweet potatos are also very high carb, but they are an excellent, nutritious food. Atkins recommends sweet potatos for the latter part of the diet.
Many low-carbers report that the glycerin in Atkins Advantage bars (one of its sweeteners) either causes them to plateau or outright gives them carb cravings. These people are miffed that Atkins claims only 2g net carbs for their bars - they think "he" should add the glycerin grams for a more accurate figure. Fortunately hubby & I split a bar over coffee for dessert every night & we never had a problem. But some people do.
It's amazing how specific ingredients can affect some people in weird ways - it can make you think you're a hopeless exception to the rule. :-)
...Baram also noted the protective actions of UCP2 might explain why a ketogenic, or high-fat, diet, used to treat severe, drug-resistant seizures in children, prevents or dramatically reducing seizures. "It is well known that the high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet can successfully treat children whose seizures are not controlled by standard antiepileptic medications," she said.
"This study provides a possible mechanism by which such a diet can provide seizure protection in children with devastating epilepsy," Dr. Carl Stafstrom, associate professor of neurology and pediatrics and director of the Pediatric Epilepsy Research laboratory at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, told UPI.
"The authors document protection from seizure-induced brain damage by linking the high fat diet to improved energy utilization by mitochondria in the developing brain," Strafstrom said. "This is a pivotal study in our search to understand how the ketogenic diet works."...
Right, in fact in the show they aired (20/20?) he said he had tried everything, including Atkins, but nothing worked for him.
I was going to say "because we're not sheeple and we've learned to evaluate the evidence & discover the truth for ourselves", but I fear you're more correct. :-)"Why does anything Atkins get so much attention on FR?? : )"
Maybe because we're all plump from sitting in front of our computers and need the kind of diet that will let you eat like a King and yet look like a waif. :)
Their conclusions so far are that a low-fat diet works for long-term weight loss. But there are two fundamental problems with this registry: It's a straw poll, and large numbers of people have only been following Atkins for a year or two. So of course the majority of people who signed up for the registry had been on low-fat: That's what everyone - successful or not - had been doing throughout the '90s!
So we need to get more long-term Atkins dieters to sign up. If you or someone you know has been on a low-carb diet for over a year and lost 30 lbs or more, you should sign (them) up. ("Freep the Registry!") Or if you've just started on Atkins, please bookmark this site so you can sign up after a year. They need a more accurate sample to work with, 'cuz they're getting bogus results (IMO) so far.
Thanks to the 3 of you for the suggestion! I have recently done just that. IIRC it was SamAdams76 who told me why it was better than margarine. (Naturally saturated fats instead of artificially hydrogenated trans-fats.) It does taste good.
I've done Atkins for only about 3 months, but I'm ingesting much more fat that I used to. Most of my weight must have come from carb loading.
LOL, and true! I mean, not about you, but in general. In fact, as my tonnage grew, one of the "reasons" I didn't do anything about it is that I "knew" that being on a diet meant constantly thinking about food, about the next meal... and then every meal was like drawing up a blueprint, having to measure everything and refer to endless government guidelines. I didn't want to do that; it was so much simpler (and deadlier) just to eat what I wanted when I was hungry.
But on Atkins, while I do get hungry (at work, on long drives, etc.) it's probably hungry like normal people feel, more or less. It's not craving, it's not starving. And I don't obsess with food. And eating is not surgery; it's picking the right things, eating them, and then if I'm still hungry (rare), eating some more.
And being really happy about it all.
Dan
That may be because you LIKE tomatoes. I've grown to where I can abide them, or not mind them. Seldom "like." Instead, I see if they have cottage cheese, or other veggies I can endure, or can serve more salad, or what fruit may be available. I eat too little fruit (my bad, not the diet), and as I've said tend to stay closer to the 20 grams than not. So I always have some wiggle-room.
Dan
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